Google Ads: Emphatic ‘No’ on Homepage, but Mobile Will Be Big

Quick — what is the world’s highest-ranked webpage that has no advertising?

No, it isn’t your blog. It’s Google, which is ranked #2, right behind Yahoo (we digress, but that’s especially remarkable since there is pretty much exactly one thing you can do on Google and dozens on Yahoo).

That would make www.google.com prime real estate for ads, and Google is all about ads. But CEO Eric Schmidt reiterates that it just ain’t going to happen.

"We absolutely are not going to sell that page," Schmidt told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s "Mad Money." Even if it enhances shareholder value, as it almost certainly would, he says; shareholders understand the long-term value of keeping their home page an ad-free zone, he explained.

Now mobile, that’s different. That niche has such potential, Schmidt believes, that it will eclipse the tethered business it already does by way of home and office computers.

"Over time we will make more money from mobile advertising," Schmidt said. "Not now, but over time."